Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

Here’s how knowing the difference changes everything.

This quote completely changed my trajectory and helped make one of the most impactful mindset shifts of my life .

On a hot summer day about four years ago, I sat in a meditation class with one of my favorite teachers. On this particular day, he wanted to kick-off the class with a quote from Buddha. He said let this quote set the intention for today’s practice. I heard the words slowly fall out of his lips, in a synchronized tone just like dancers dance in synchronicity to each other across the stage. He said:

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional”

Short. Precise and to the point. His words hit me like an arrow aimed directly at my heart, an arrow designed to create a ripple of awareness that has yet till this day let me go. As a professionally certified mindset & wellness coach, I have spent the last 10 years learning about our mindsets and why so many of us are unable to alchemize the pain that keeps us hostage to our past. I’m also a certified Crucial Conversation specialist and have spent numerous years training leaders on how to have tough conversations that are led by facts not stories. So why on that day did his words hit me like an arrow aimed directly at my heart? An arrow designed to create a ripple of awareness that has yet till this day let me go.

Because until that moment, I had failed to make the personal connection to my own stories and how those stories held me hostage in the past but most importantly were the only source of suffering that I was experiencing in the present moment.

You see, for years, I felt shame about becoming a single mom at 22 years old, shame because I disappointed my parents and went against their religious beliefs. Shame, because becoming a single mother at such a young age deemed failure in the eyes of society and boxed me into a stereotype.

This shame led me to create stories that supported why I should be shameful about such a beautiful and brave decision. Stories that led me to become an overachiever to prove my worth and to take action that showed the world that indeed I was not a stereotype. These stories held me captive in the box that outlined “who I Should Be”.

Hearing this quote on that hot summer day, led me to follow the awareness and come face to face with my stories. This awareness allowed me to take a deep look at my life, my human nature and my self worth.

Through continuous meditation, journaling and working with a coach I was able to identify that the shameful stories that I had identified with for all those years were powerless unless I believed in them. It led me to look at the facts vs. the story. And the thing is that facts are simple and accurate. And stories get foggy, and are filled with emotions that make you feel like a victim.

I was able to reframe my narrative and most importantly I was able to reframe my story from a place of authentic truth. I was able to connect with that part of me that was so courageous and that deeply wanted her child that she went against her family's expectations and instead chose to take actions that were aligned with her truth. I saw that my decision to become a single mom was an intuitive decision that changed the trajectory of my life in ways that I had never dreamed of.

I understood that the shame the stories carried was not my shame, but rather shame I was made to believe I should feel. That realization allowed me to swap shame for gratitude. I’m grateful to the younger girl version of me that kept going even though the whole world said it was impossible. I’m grateful for all those challenges because they taught me to be resilient, to rely on myself and to keep dreaming.

I finally saw who the world said “I SHOULD Be”; I was never meant to be. No wonder, I spent so many years feeling like I don’t belong and trying to fit in. I was also able to embrace all of me, to step into my full power. At last, I was Personally Free. You know why?

Because, I’m not my thoughts and neither are you. I’m not the story I tell myself about what happened to me and neither are you. I’m the facts that unfolded in my life's journey, factual experiences that happened for me not to me. I owe everything I’m today and all that I will ever be to that experience of becoming a young single mom.

Today, I’m no longer suffering and I’m sharing this with you to remind you that you don’t have to suffer either. You too can FREE yourself. Pain is unavoidable, because indeed there are experiences that hurt us in our lives. Yet suffering is a choice, because if we heal from these experiences when they happen to us we will not be suffering in the present moment from inaccurate memories and stories we tell ourselves about what happened.

I say the quote above is fake because actually it was not Buddha who said it. When I searched for this quote, I found that this quote has been attributed to the Dalai Lama, Haruki Murakami, and M. Kathleen Casey. Which, sent me into a laughing frenzy because I find the universe to always be so comical. This entire time, I thought I owed so many of my breakthroughs to Buddha, but the truth is that who said it is irrelevant what is not irrelevant is the divine timing of the universe. Trust the process, learn to see with the eyes of your soul and be open to receiving the messages that are meant to find you.

Rooting for your Awakening, AM